In recent weeks, cattle ranchers and landowners in Bolivia’s Cordillera province, located in the south of the department of Santa Cruz, resorted to blockades and violence in order to halt the work of Bolivia’s National Institute for Agrarian Reform. As a referendum on Departmental Autonomy for Santa Cruz draws near, the conflict calls into question the central government’s ability to enforce the law in the Bolivian lowlands.
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Santa Cruz and the other lowland departments of Bolivia plan to go ahead with a referendum to approve autonomy statutes, setting a new system of government for the department on May 4th, in spite of the National Electoral Court ruling forbidding the referendum and the disapproval of the international community. […]
The United Nations’ International Narcotics Control Board recently made the announcement that Peru and Bolivia should, once and for all, outlaw the chewing of coca. Those are fighting words in Bolivia, where coca leaves have been grown and used in their natural form for thousands of years.
An elderly woman and executive leader in the women’s division of the Six Federations tilted a gigantic vat of communal stew over, filling a long line of plastic containers for those at the blockade in La Paz’s Plaza Murillo. She predicts that Bolivia’s trajectory towards political change will be lengthy and arduous. "But," she said, "We have been struggling for years, and will not stop now."
Watch this online video by Bolivian hip-hop group, Uka Mau y Ke. The music blends ancient Andean folk styles and new hip-hop beats with lyrics about revolution and social change.
The US embassy in Bolivia has been using American taxpayer money to help fund opposition groups, according to an article in The Progressive magazine. We speak with journalist Benjamin Dangl, who broke the story. […]
Declassified documents and interviews on the ground in Bolivia prove that the Bush Administration is using U.S. taxpayers’ money to undermine the Evo Morales government and coopt the country’s dynamic social movements. […]
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